Aaron Watson Earned His First Radio Airplay as Fill-in Music

Although Texas singer-songwriter Aaron Watson saw his stock rise nationally when his 12th studio album, The Underdog, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 2015, he'd been making a career out of making music for a long time before then. Watson released his first record, Singer/Songwriter, in 1999; his third album, 2002's Shut Up and Dance, is the one that started to earn him more regular airplay, though.

Below, Watson shares with The Boot what he recalls about the first time he heard himself on the radio ... and it wasn't exactly conventional airplay.

The first time I heard myself on the radio, it was this small-town station. They took my very first album, and whenever they would have some areas where they didn’t sell advertising, they would take my album and they would put it in there -- whether it was a minute or 30 seconds.

So, I’d have a song come on, and it would just fade out 30 seconds later, but man, I thought that was the greatest thing ever. It was awesome.